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Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

Net gains all round

Once it was sale rooms, junk shops and car boot fairs. Now, it's online auctions that are doing big business with 1.7m users registered in the UK. The main player is eBay, as Patrick Collinson reports

Saturday February 8, 2003
The Guardian

Disbelief and anger greeted the news this week that sick-minded individuals had scooped up debris from the Shuttle Columbia and within hours were selling it at online auction house eBay. One item was allegedly fetching a price of $21m before the site pulled it.

But the other side of the coin is that hundreds of similar individuals were bidding for these shuttle 'souvenirs'. Like it or not, the online auction - and eBay specifically - has emerged from the rubble of the dot.com boom as one of the big winners of the internet age. And like Google.com, its users, and they now number 62m across the globe, are evangelical about the service once they get hooked.

A search for 'I-hate-eBay.com' or 'eBay-sucks.com' throws up curiously few results. Even the 'ebayersthatsuck.com' site says it just wants to name and shame fake or fraudulent bidders or sellers. And a fake ebayupdates.com site that conned some customers into handing over their bank details last year has done little to dent confidence in the operation.

Around 1.5m people are joining eBay every month around the world. There are other internet auction houses, but eBay's market dominance is almost complete. In the UK there are 1.7m registered users and around L150m worth of goods changed hands over eBay UK in the last three months of 2002 - and the figure is rising every quarter.

In some ways the phenomenon is akin to the early dot.com boom, when first time investors started dabbling in share trading, with many accumulating huge paper fortunes. Now millions are trading in real goods over the net and because it requires almost no capital to set up, for many it is their first taste of running a business.

A survey by eBay in mid-2001 found that around 10,000 individuals in the US had given up their day jobs to become full-time eBay traders. Now Doug McCallum, UK managing director of eBay, estimates that the figure could be as high as 40,000 across the globe.

Angela Green, 42, used to attend traditional auctions with a friend, a serious antiques dealer. She began buying rather battered-looking Victorian oil lamps, later repairing and renovating them at her home in London's Docklands. Eventually her house became too cluttered, and a friend at work suggested she offload some of them on eBay.

The response was phenomenal. Buyers in the USA were prepared to fork out many times the amounts she had paid. All she needed to do was pack the lamps and send them off - billing the buyer for postage and packing.

"I still primarily buy antiques I personally like, do them up, keep them for a while until I find something better, then sell them on. But I also now look out for collectables that I know sell well on eBay," says Ms Green
"There is a very good weekly auction in south London I go to on Saturday mornings which is mainly house clearances so you never know what you're going to find, which is fun. I now seriously consider it as a kind of fun/money-making hobby for when I retire."

Other recent joiners are considering giving up their principal jobs to take up full-time trading over eBay. British expat and gas engineer Jeff Crew lives in Thailand. A collector of inlaid- pearl decorative panels, a friend advised him to try selling one on eBay. He was stunned when he sold it for $200 compared with the $20 he paid. Now he has sourced a local producer of the pearl panels and ships several each week to eBay buyers in the US and UK.

But internet auctions don't spell easy money for everyone. Already there is anecdotal evidence that the supply of cheap, saleable stock that can be found at car boot sales or house clearances is drying up.

So what works, and what doesn't, if you want to start selling over eBay? Firstly, it's not just about Victorian collectables or memorabilia; at any one time there are 10m items and 18,000 categories of goods for sale on the site.

"The things that work best are often brand new, where there is a scarcity value and normal retail channels can't supply enough. For example, there was huge demand for the Harry Potter Lego set," says Mr McCallum. "Other stuff that is popular includes items that have come to the end of a retail life and you can no longer go into a shop and find them."

A glance through the top search terms entered into eBay UK reveals an obsession with top-end fashion items, with Burberry leading the way, followed closely by Evisu and Gucci. Consumer electronics such as Playstation and XBox also feature highly, alongside DVDs and digital cameras.
The biggest trend in collectables - which Mr McCallum says makes up around 5% of eBay's UK sales - is vintage clothing, especially from the 30s. "We've seen a very strong following build up over the past few months."

Mr McCallum's top tip for sellers is to put up a picture of the item you want to auction. "The percentage of goods that sell is far, far higher if a picture of the item is attached."

One aspect of eBay is that it relies on trust. Buyers send money to sellers they don't know with only a relatively small (L120) fraud protection offered by the site.

"We've seen research about the level of trust within communities around the world, and how greater trust results in more commerce. Britain actually scores quite highly, the US is middling, while in Eastern Europe and Asia it is quite low," says Mr McCallum.

The company believes that, despite its already phenomenal growth much lies ahead. In Germany, eBay is far bigger than in the UK, in part because of easier and cheaper broadband access.
It has already snapped up PayPal, an online payments service, and may in future consider buying shipping/delivery services (look out FedEx) and offering its own import/export facilities.
In the meantime, there is a global audience out there of 62m people mad enough to consider buying the junk in your attic and garage. Go sell.

akin – similar, pokrewny,
allegedly - przypuszczalnie, rzekomo
battered - sponiewierany
cluttered – full of useless things, zagracony
to con – to cheat, to deceive, oszukać
dent – a small mark on the surface, wgniecenie
to dabble – to try doing something as an amateur or for the first time
debris - szczątki, gruz
expat – expatriate, someone that doesn’t live in their own country
fraudulent - oszukańczy
to fork out – to pay, zabulić
to get hooked – to become very involved in something
rubble - gruz
scarcity - rzadkość
to scoop up – to pick up
to snap up – to obtain quickly, rzucić się na coś
vintage – old but of high quality and valuable


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